Grey Gardens
Salesman
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Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing
The practice of documenting the activities of average people
engaged in their everyday lives has become routine, even
something of a cliché, in recent years. We are currently deluged
by the revelations of our fellow citizens on daily talk shows or
series like MTV's The Real World. The presence of cameras
in people's lives, recording everything from the drab to the
dramatic, appears less an intrusion than an invitation to
communicate our personalities, even our peccadilloes, as the
popular HBO series, Taxicab Confessions, illustrates.
This being the case, it may be difficult to recall the 1960s,
when the genre of "direct cinema," or what some have called
cinema verite, first took off in the work of such pioneers in
the field as D. A. Pennebaker, Frederick Wiseman, and the
Maysles brothers. Their films -- and their belief that some
version of the "truth" might be perceived through the lens of
the camera -- could not have come about without the invention of
some new-fangled cinematic aids. The introduction in 1960 of
lightweight, professional-quality 16mm cameras, coupled with
more sensitive sound recording equipment, allowed a team of
observers to insinuate themselves virtually seamlessly into an
environment. It became possible to compile an ethnographic
record of any number of subjects, as well as to use film as a
vehicle for addressing crucial questions about our culture and
ourselves. This meant not simply filming people talking about
their sex lives in the backseats of taxi cabs, but, instead,
presenting subjects, like national politics, or institutions,
like schools and the police, at the core of our lives. Making
sense through cinema of cultural meaning and at the same time
constructing compelling stories was the aim of "direct cinema."
These ambitious goals are illustrated in the most well known
work of the pioneers in "direct cinema." The Maysles brothers in
particular have tackled a variety of subjects, ranging from the
Rolling Stones (Gimme Shelter [1970]) to Christo
(Running Fence [1977]). As a team, the Maysles felt they
could enter into any kind of situation and document it without
materially affecting the action. Under the best of
circumstances, the filmmakers believed a compelling sense of
drama would emerge without their interference or voice-over
narration that might take the place of the comments and actions
of the subjects themselves. The Maysles have stated that they
wanted their work to possess a deliberate moral dynamic. By
showing life "as it is," filming their subjects in their
day-to-day lives, they might lead viewers to understand their
own circumstances.
To that end, the brothers endeavored (before David's death in
1987) to investigate activities or individuals that provide, in
their words, the "stuff of which morality is made." By watching
the subtle compromises and complications that produce our
everyday acts, the films of the Maysles brothers remind us that
even the most innocuous actions -- like deciding how to treat a
door to door salesman or to care for the needs of an aging
parent -- are comprised of the most complex causes.
Salesman was the first full-length film the Maysles
released, and it follows four Irish Catholic Bible salesmen from
the Boston area as they peddle their wares to working class
customers in New England and parts of Florida. The four men each
have a nickname -- the Rabbit, the Gipper, the Bull and the
Badger -- that serves as shorthand for their personality. Paul
Brennan, the Badger, becomes the focus of the Maysles' interest
not only because of his lively manner but also because of the
obstacles he encounters trying to meet his sales quota. As the
narrative progresses, it becomes clear that Paul has, in effect,
jinxed himself by dwelling upon his failures.
Paul's descent becomes even more poignant as he reminisces about
his childhood and the options he put aside in order to be an
independent operator. In a self-conscious Irish brogue, Paul
laments his loss of security, symbolized by a "regular" job and
pension. The degree to which Paul is self-conscious about his
job as well as his failure to succeed in it set him apart, even
though his excessive dwelling upon the matter can at times
appear maudlin. The other three characters, by contrast, refrain
from any analysis except to count their sales and consider the
prospects for the coming day.
The Maysles may sympathize with Paul's dilemma, but that does
not blind them to his willingness to bend the rules in order to
succeed. This occurs most clearly when he visits a customer whom
we know to be financially strapped and lies that her husband
ordered a Bible. However, while the film engages in a clear
critique of consumerism and/as religiosity, what intrigues one
as much as anything is the nature of selling as a performance.
Entering a person's home and playing the part of a well-meaning
representative of the "good book," when the actual point is to
take away someone's hard-earned money requires a fair degree of
graft and manipulation. The paradox is that Paul, the most
capable performer, experiences the greatest difficulty on the
job. By the end of Salesman, he allows his private
anxieties to leak into the public sphere of the marketplace,
where they can play no part.
Successful performers/salesmen, the film implies, must lose
themselves so completely in their acts that questions of
motivation or intention never arise. Paul's turmoil provides the
Maysles with a dramatic structure for their film, but it damages
his ability to earn a living. As a result, the most telling
ethical dilemma in the film turns out not to be the
transformation of the gospel into a commodity, but the
realization that success in the marketplace requires the
obliteration of self-consciousness or self-criticism.
The Maysles' fascination with the roles people play in their
lives takes on a very different but equally compelling dimension
in the 1976 feature, Grey Gardens. The film features a
mother and daughter, Big and Little Edie Beale, cousins of
Jackie Kennedy Onassis. While still possessed of all their
well-bred pride and sense of privilege, the Beales live in
elegant poverty and allow their East Hampton, New York mansion
to crumble about them. The manner in which the walls dampen with
decay or are eaten apart by errant raccoons brings to mind the
ruined finery of Miss Haversham's abode in Dickens' Great
Expectations. Like that character, the Beales appear
oblivious to their circumstances. It was only when the town
government forced them to repair their property that the two
women did anything to prevent it from falling down around them.
In making Grey Gardens, the Maysles shot over 70 hours of
film during the course of six weeks as summer turned into fall.
In a sense, the change of seasons is the sole dramatic arc of
the film, for one day is very much like the last in the lives of
the Beales. Little Edie dresses in yet another idiosyncratic
outfit, alternately argues with and amuses her mother and yearns
to leave for a new life in Manhattan. Their conversations have
the quality of a tape loop. Big Edie was left penniless when her
husband ran off with another woman, leaving Little Edie to
return home in her early thirties to care for her abandoned
mother. Between them, a litany of deferred desires and
unresolved ambitions circulate like the cats that occupy the
house without restraint or supervision. They speak of
infatuations with men who have been dead or absent for years or
romances that never flowered into marriage. This constant
retreat into retrospection gives one the sense that the Beales
only barely live in the present moment.
As much as the bickering between mother and daughter remind one
of Chekhov's
Three Sisters, there is little that is tragic or even
melancholy about the lives of the Beales. Complain all they
might, their dependence upon one another combines in equal
measure symbiosis and parasitism. Big Edie's infirmities require
the aid of her daughter, while Little Edie luxuriates in the
opportunity to dramatize her emotions for her mother. Her
litanies of regret and recrimination for a life she was not
allowed combine with a very palpable sense that she could exist
no other way than this. Improvised and slapped together as their
lives might seem, the Beales never come across as embarrassed or
apologetic.
When we first meet Little Edie she is wearing one of her
memorable outfits cobbled together from various, and often
unmatched, items in her tattered wardrobe. Odd as the ensemble
might seem, she tells the Maysles, "This is the best thing to
wear for the day." Their lives possess a similar
appropriateness," no matter how ramshackle the circumstances
come across. Their home may be falling apart; food may be
rotting on the tables; and the numerous cats might be using the
floor as a litter box, but none of this appears eccentric, just
the "normal" way mother and daughter have chosen to live.
Even as one is beguiled by the Beales, it is difficult not to
reject Grey Gardens initially as a kind of upper crust
freak show. The first time I watched the film, I found it hard
to believe that the Maysles did anything other than take
advantage of two aging and needy women, no matter how clearly
they appear to revel in all the attention of their "gentleman
callers." However, after listening to the commentary track, and
particularly the observations made by the trio of women who
edited the film, a different side of the narrative emerged. The
women call attention to the Beales' indefatigable temperament,
the fact that they both possess, in Little Edie's words, "a
staunch character." Their comments underscore how much neither
Big Edie nor Little Edie were manipulated by anyone. They chose
to allow the Maysles into their life and never let them see
anything they did not want revealed to the public. Big Edie died
shortly after the film was released and Little Edie passed away
earlier this year in Florida, but one imagines them still
playfully badgering one another as the seasons pass behind the
rotting walls of Gray Gardens.
Salesman and Grey Gardens each tell a different
brand of "truth" by creating a narrative out of the seemingly
random episodes in the daily lives of bible saleman and an
eccentric set of women. What makes the Maysles' work special
lies in how they manage, by focusing so intently on their
subjects, to elicit a body of information that the audience is
compelled to examine for its possible meaning. The brothers
always stressed that they came to the subjects with no specific
agenda other than a fascination with the lives before them. What
they, and we, find is that by paying very close attention, what
at first seems to be a sequence of mundane business transactions
or arguments between a mother and daughter convey information we
would not otherwise be privy to about the nature of commerce and
the many forms of love.
If certain present day filmmakers have transformed the
techniques the Maysles helped pioneer into little more than
salacious voyeurism, such as we find on MTV's Real World
or HBO's Taxicab Confessions, the fault is not with
"direct cinema," but the ends to which it has been taken. The
"real thing" lies all around us, waiting for others to take up
cameras and seek it out.
— 11 April 2002
